Ethiopian Sunrise

It’s sunrise in Ethiopia. I landed in Addis Ababa Ethiopia a few minutes ago at 5:45 a.m. and have to wait until I fly out again at 11:30 from here to Kampala Uganda. I am Looking forward to actually seeing the ground in this next flight rather than trying to squeeze in some sleep in the overnight flight I just finished. I am curious to know what Africa looks like from the air.
I read an article recently that stated researchers had done extensive DNA testing to try and narrow down where in East Africa the human species originated. According to evolutionary theory East Africa, and near the Rift Valley, is where anthropologists believe the earliest human forms of life came from based on significant skeletal remains found. The article explained that researchers were using DNA to narrow down that location specifically. They came up with Addis Ababa as ground zero for the origins of human life. Don’t ask me how or why this place came up but I found the article interesting only because I knew I had a stop here on my trip. As you already know when it comes to the origins of the human species Christians are usually in one of two camps that disagree with one another. One camp, most likely the larger of the two, completely rejects the evolutionary account and believes that the Biblical account of God creating the human species is properly interpreted to say that God created the first human beings (Adam and Eve) in the garden of Eden which would be in the south of modern Iraq. In this view there is no substantive change or evolution of the human being over the time period between then and now. Dress Adam and Eve up in a suit and dress and they would blend in rather well in a modern mall. These folks are strict creationists.
The other camp of Christians accept evolution as part of the process of what God used to bring forth the human species ultimately out of what may have been there prior to that. They are Theistic evolutionists. They accept the anthropological fossil record of humans originating from the primate species at some point in history. The Adam and Eve story picks up this species when God brought them through one of the stages of evolution that granted them consciousness and awareness of being in a relationship with Him. In other words, Adam and Eve were the first two primates exiting the primate stage and entering the human stage by being given the awareness of having a soul made in God’s image and now aware of eternity, love, guilt, fear of death, a desire to express artistically, to appreciate music, an ability to express poetry and, most notably, a capacity to worship.
I’m not going to say which camp or variation of either of them I am in personally…. After all, it is 6:30 in the morning after a sleepless night and too early to think deep like that. What is important to notice however, is that both camps reject the “Darwinian” theory of evolution. Both agree in a sovereign creator -God, who is the author of life and the one to whom all humans are accountable to for what they did with their relationship with him. Both are authentic Christians but simply differ on theories of origin. The big disagreement is really between Darwinian and Theistic evolutionary theory. Darwinian evolutionists merely dismiss outright the creationists as absurd and don’t even bother with arguing with them because they do not take them seriously. Not so with the theistic evolutionists. This growing group of Christian thinkers are taken somewhat seriously by other non Christian thinkers who embrace Darwinian evolution as fact.
Darwinian evolutionists reject the presence of a creator and suggest rather that chance, time and the movement of matter and energy ultimately over time assembled into basic life forms and from there over enough time adapted to the challenges of life and survival (the fit and capable surviving and the incapable going extinct) and evolved from simple life forms gradually into complex ones. This was a completely natural process that required no God or gods to make it happen. Natural selection instead allowed some forms of life to succeed (because they adapted and evolved) while other weaker less adaptable ones did not.
It may be before 7 a.m. but I am awake enough to think in my groggy state that this theory is absurd. Or let me be more fair. It does not stand up to serious open minded thinking and rigorous testing. By the way, Darwin himself did not advocate the idea that there was absolutely no God and his theory was certain. He himself had trepidation with his own theory. Darwin was open minded. Darwinians are less so. There are a thousand ways in which the chances of this kind of random selection and evolution do not work when challenged. The chances of that all of our universe randomly assembled and came together on its own are a trillion times more unlikely than any unlikely event we can imagine. Let me offer just one simple one that, don’t forget, emerges out of a 6:30 a.m. mind.
I am in the terminal at the Airport in Addis Ababa and looking out at the Boeing 737 that will take me to Entebbe Airport in Kampala. Darwinian evolutionists want me to believe in the kinds of extremely unlikely chances that for example there was no creator involved in that 737. No human creator thought up, engineered, built and put into service a complex plane like that. Instead all the materials were around in the universe and over enough time found each other and assembled into the parts (hundreds of thousands of them) that make up that 737. And by chance they just happened to meld, assemble, weld, screw, rivet, attach, mold, and shape together to produce all the complex wiring, computer systems, hydraulics, and everything else that makes up that plane into the flying masterpiece that will safely take me from here to Uganda (oh yeah I forgot to mention by chance it happened to be painted in those lovely colors of Ethiopian Airlines!). Lucky for me natural selection is thorough.
Not credible or believable. I think I’m going to stick with the idea of the Boeing engineers, experts, and craftsmen. I like a creator behind the masterpieces I entrust my life to at 34,000 feet and 900 Km/h.
Having said that, I am awake enough now to entertain the thought that this 737 looks much different than the plane the Wright brothers first flew. D‘OH! I gave something away I vowed I would not. At least I “THINK” the Wright Brothers plane looked different but I have never seen it and was not there to state that emphatically. How’s that for dodging the bullet?
The last point I’ll make about the Darwinian evolutionists is it’s really too bad many of them don’t spend time here in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. If they did, they would discover that Ethiopians have a deep and ancient stream of vital Christianity in some very authentic and historic forms like the Ethiopian Coptic Church. You can see it even in their distinctive and soulful art. There is also a significant Muslim population here. And before these two religions came to Ethiopia, their natural tribal religions were here since the dawn of time. No matter where you go, including this land of human origins you will find mankind building altars and expressing her desire to worship, to contemplate the soul, life after death, eternity, love, guilt and beauty. That has to come from somewhere. Those things are not simply a matter of chance otherwise all the animal species would have them as well. But they don’t. Just we do. That convinces me at even this early morning groggy hour that the signature of the creator is within and behind us.
And it also reassures me that I’ll board that 737, watch an in-flight movie, likely use a toilet, and safely land at Entebbe this afternoon. Thank God for the creators who are the Boeing engineers!